Universal health care is a topic that is particularly close to me. I have medical preconditions that should require me to have regular medical care. I am also experiencing symptoms of what might be something very serious. I would have had it checked out when I was working at my old job where I had coverage, but I needed to see a specialist for further testing. The cost to see this specialist was too high, and I could not afford it.
Now that I am considered to be low-income I am available for the Oregon Health Plan, but their coverage is also limited. I worry about my health daily because I have a wife and kids, but what can I do.
When I learned that President Obama wants to make universal health care in the United States a reality, I was overwhelmed with excitement and relief. The more I learned about the Obama-Biden plan for health care reform the excitement and relief lessened. The parts of the health care reform plan that worried me the most were about ones that involved small business. My question is should the Obama Administration include items pertaining to small business as part of their health care reform?
The Small Business Health Tax Credit, Low-cost National Health Exchange, and “Pay or Play” mandates are at the focus of my should question. I tried to find opposing sides to these issues, but when I looked there was none. Everyone from business owners to health care providers and Democrats to Republicans were in agreement that implementing Small Business Health Tax Credit, Low-cost National Health Exchange, and “Pay or Play” mandates would be a bad idea at this time. In fact the only group of people that would benefit right now would be the insurance companies because everyone would have insurance.
The Small Business Health Tax Credit is an incentive that offers business owners a refund of up to fifty percent of what the pay towards their employees’ health care premiums. The size or percent of the refund a certain business owner would receive would be based on the number of employees that he or she had with the lower number of employees receiving a larger percent. The Obama plan says that this will be optional to business owners. If owners choose to pay a portion of the premiums they are still out at least fifty percent. This loss will go to the consumers in increased cost of goods and services. This will lead to loss in wages and loss in jobs. If owners choose not to pay the employees don’t have coverage, or if we do achieve universal health coverage in the United States then the cost will go to the federal budget. If this becomes a mandate the same result of the pay option will happen or the business will go bankrupt. None of these scenarios are expectable.
The Low-cost National Health Exchange is also known as risk-pooling. This is where small businesses would join groups of other small businesses to spread risk and cost over a wide base of members. This would allow smaller businesses to purchase insurance at the lower prices and variety of choices that large companies have access to. This is a great idea, but it only works if the businesses join. In cases were risk-pooling was tried and businesses dropped out of the risk-pooling group, the prices of coverage was raised higher than before they joined. And if businesses are mandated to join the same results of the mandated Small Business Health Tax Credit are possible outcomes.
The “Pay or Play” mandate makes it mandatory that big businesses pay a “significant contribution” towards paying for employee premiums or pay a penalty. Even though this applies to larger businesses, small businesses worry that it will soon apply to them. The Obama administration does not make clear what a “significant contribution” is, but it is sure that it would be too much for many small businesses and they would choose the “Pay” Option. The “Pay” penalty is two hundred ninety five fee per employee. It is not clear if this is a one time fee, annual fee, or what. This is not the important part though. The cost to cover that employee would go to the federal budget again.
With the possibility of all this cost falling back on the government, the question is how is the government plan on paying for it. If this hurts small businesses, which the Obama-Biden accounts for over ninety nine percent of the employers in America, how will they be able to pay for it? The most likely answer will be an increase in taxes. An increase in taxes during a recession is never a good idea.
There are millions of uninsured Americans that have to resort to using the emergency rooms around the nation further drive the costs of health care higher, so health care reform is a must. I believe the Obama health care reform plan has many good points such as prevention, information technologies, restrictions on insurance companies, and allowing safe medications from foreign countries are great ideas. I am an Obama backer with slightly socialist tendencies, but I think regulating small businesses would further hurt the economy, the health care system, and most importantly the people of the United States.
(In addition to using this as an outline for my speech I would edit together clips from my multi-media sources, the two charts, and the illustration of president Obama)
Source notes
http://cdeross5150.wordpress.com/2009/01/22/source-notes-president-obama%e2%80%99s-inaugural-address/
Multi-media
Images
http://cdeross5150.wordpress.com/2009/03/13/image-source-notes-the-long-road-to-healthcare-reform/
http://cdeross5150.wordpress.com/2009/03/13/image-source-notes-mandates-for-health-insurance/
Citizen
Academic
Institutional
http://cdeross5150.wordpress.com/2009/03/13/source-notesaccess-to-affordable-quality-health-care/
http://cdeross5150.wordpress.com/2009/03/13/source-notes-the-obama-biden-plan/
Journalistic
http://cdeross5150.wordpress.com/2009/03/13/source-notesblueprints-for-a-health-care-fix/
http://cdeross5150.wordpress.com/2009/03/13/source-notes-relief-for-small-business-not-much/
*there are more than three sources that are also blog sources
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